Posts Tagged With: astonishing

#Day14 #365JosHappyDays – Feeling astonished and privileged
So what a truly incredible and insightful past couple of days, I was given the opportunity to visit and meet the people behind all the factory’s and workshops of the best in Japan. Ranging from massive machinery crashing down forging steel and making me flinch everytime from 10m away! To one signal man sat in his lounge under a heated blanket with generations of samurai knowledge and wisdom being sharpened into a fine point of a blade. Obviously no pictures are allowed from this secretive industry but to be allowed behind closed door was a serious privilege and a memorable experience. Then to make my day even better I got to live my blacksmithing dream, making a knife put of a nail! This is a great place where experts have come together trying to inspire and restore the traditional Japanese methods into the next generation before the knowledge is lost forever.

In the picture above you see the stages from nail to my kids on the right; it is heated, flattered, twisted, flattered to a fine tip and shape then sanded, sandblasted, grinded, polished and finally stamped.

And here’s my finished knife, I’m still astonished with the whole process, so much fun. It cuts paper too, I can’t wait to open a years worth of post when I return with this sucker !